


Winter Roses

by sunkelles



Series: Sansaery Week 2019 [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Sansaery Week 2019, Set During A Storm of Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-09-23 11:53:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20339677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: Sansa and Margaery in the gardens of the Red Keep plus a few winter roses.





	Winter Roses

**Author's Note:**

> written for sansaery week day one: flowers
> 
> notes: all the flowers that are mentioned in this fic are native to alaska other than winter roses, which are native to westeros. i have some degree of familiarity with alaska and it's geography, so that's always what i base the north off of in my writing. also imagine: sansa eating fireweed ice cream.
> 
> HEY FAM GUESS WHO FORGOT TO POST THIS YESTERDAY! this dummy XD

Sansa and Margaery spend as much time together in the gardens as they can manage. In the gardens, it feels like she’s surrounded by friends. It’s just her and Margaery and the flowers that they're both so at home among.

“Were there many flowers at Winterfell?” Margaery asks her one day, “I’ve heard that the North is barren.”

“Not in the summer,” Sansa tells her. In the summer, the grounds surrounding Winterfell are filled with flowers as sure as the inside gardens are. The hills are dotted with little blue forget-me-nots, little yellow jewelweeds, and little purple fireweeds. Her favorite, though, were the thickets that grew closest to the castle. Those were the pale blue winter roses that her father used to claim her aunt Lyanna so loved.

“Of course,” Margaery says, “winter roses are native to that area, aren’t they?”

“They are,” Sansa says. She does not mention the other flowers that she loves dearly, growing wild through the hills.

“Would you like to see some? There’s a thicket of them here in the gardens.”

“Really?” she asks softly. Margaery grabs her hand and skips with her through the gardens. Then, they come to a thicket of familiar roses. They’re the same shade of baby blue as forget-me-nots. The ones that grew at Winterfell were a paler blue, but these still send a sense of nostalgia and homesickness through her. She takes a whiff, and the strong scent of rose fills her nostrils.

“They’re beautiful,” she says.

“I’m surprised that your father allowed winter roses to grow at Winterfell,” Margaery says, “after what happened to your aunt, I’d think they’d be a painful reminder.”

“Why would winter roses be painful for my father?” Sansa asks, “they were aunt Lyanna’s favorites.” Maybe that was it, just that the flowers reminded him of his dead sister?

“They were also the flowers that Prince Rhaegar used to crown her queen of love and beauty,” Margaery says. _Oh, _Sansa thinks. She’d never heard that detail before. She knew that Rhaegar had crowned her aunt queen of love and beauty at a tourney before he stole away her person and her innocence (her mother had told her as much) but she didn’t know that the crown had been made of winter roses.

“I don’t know if I like them as much anymore,” Sansa says. Winter roses already hold their own sort of sadness for her, but knowing how they led to her aunt’s demise, Sansa’s starting to think they might be cursed.

“Why would that change anything?” Margaery asks, gently, “I’d think that you’d think it was romantic.” Sansa still loves her knights and songs, despite what all has happened to her, but that does not mean that she cannot see when a prince is a monster. If she knows anything, it’s that.

“There is nothing _romantic _about it,” Sansa spits, “Rhaegar stole my aunt and he- he” She feels ill just considering it.

“Maybe he didn’t steal her,” Margaery suggests, “maybe he didn’t rape her. What if they were in love?”

“What do you mean?” Sansa asks. She’s never heard it even suggested that Lyanna could have loved Prince Rhaegar. He stole her away from King Robert, her true betrothed. Her lord father would not have supported King Robert if his cause weren’t just.

“She wouldn’t have loved him,” Sansa says firmly, “Prince Rhaegar was as mad as his father.” That’s the way that she’s always heard it told. 

“Perhaps they weren’t,” Margaery concedes, “but that doesn’t mean that he _stole _her. Think about yourself- your situation, wouldn’t you do_ anything_ to be free of it?” Sansa _is _doing whatever it takes to be free of it. She’s agreed to let the Tyrells spirit her away to a castle she’s never been to and to marry a crippled man that she’s never met. She’s sure that he’s as kind and gallant as Margaery and the rest say, but he’s not what she envisioned as a child. She’s too worldly now to believe such a thing even exists.

“You’re saying that my aunt Lyanna felt trapped?” Sansa asks. She herself had felt trapped at Winterfell, once, no matter how silly it had been. She had dreamt of grander palaces and gallant knights all done up in their Southron finery. She thought it a terrible tragedy that she could never have that at home before she was married away, and viewed marriage as the only way to get what she wanted. Sansa was so stupid back then. 

“I’m saying that it’s a possibility,” Margaery says, “perhaps you and your aunt have more in common than you ever thought.” Sansa considers this.

“Perhaps,” she says. Perhaps Lyanna fell in love with a beautiful prince who wanted to spirit her away to be his bride. Perhaps, Lyanna was simply trying to escape a betrothal to King Robert. Even Sansa knows that King Robert isn’t a man that she would have dreamt of marrying. She often said that Joffrey was nothing like his father, back when she imagined that he was perfect prince.

Margaery plucks a rose off the bush and gives it to her. Sansa closes her eyes and inhales. For a moment, she’s back with at Winterfell, traversing the grounds with Jeyne Poole, trying to shake Arya who’s trying to follow them and play too. This time she'll just let Arya play with them, she thinks now. Jonquil can never have too many attendants. Septa Mordane will corral them and demand that they complete their stitching, and then compliment Sansa’s and say how the other girls should strive to be more like her. Later in the day they’ll watch Robb and Jon and Theon train and place secret bets on who will win today. She’ll read Bran and Rickon a bedtime story, and then her mother will brush her hair before she falls asleep.

“Would you like a crown?” Margaery asks, and Sansa is pulled out of her dreamland.

“What?”

“I can make you a crown of the flowers, just like your aunt’s.” Father and Septa and Bran and Rickon are all dead now. Jeyne and Arya have likely joined them. Mother and Robb are on the opposite side of the war, so far off that Sansa will likely never see them again, even assuming that they all live through this. Her only hope for a semblance of happiness is Highgarden; to become a golden rose instead of a pale blue one.

If Cersei were to see her here in the gardens, clad in a crown of winter roses just like Lyanna used to wear, Sansa can’t imagine the horrors that she’d be subjected to. Cersei has never forgiven Lyanna for being the woman that Robert would have preferred. But this is the closest that Sansa can come to returning home right now, and that’s all that she wants.

“Please,” Sansa says, “make me that crown.” She wants to pretend, for a moment, that everything is the way that it once was. Margaery nods, and sets to work. She quickly finishes the circlet of roses.

“A crown for the queen of love and beauty,” Margaery tells her, which is almost funny as Margaery is soon to become queen and Sansa will never be one now. Margaery crowns her right here in the garden, among the flowers, a circlet of winter roses on her weirwood red hair. Though she may be a Southron hostage now, Sansa has never felt more like a Stark.


End file.
